In a series of brilliant, furious Tweets, Zoe Quinn tears apart the myth that #GamerGate has "moved beyond" harassment of women

Yesterday, fed up with the equivocating bullshit that’s constantly being said in the media and within gaming circles about #GamerGate, and pissed off at all those who think of themselves as good people but still refuse to see the hatred and misogyny and harassment and doxxing that has been central to GG since the start, Quinn posted a series of (justifiably) angry tweets calling out the cowards in the profession who know that what’s going on is deeply evil but won’t say anything, and documenting the unending harassment she and her boyfriend, and her family, and his family are still getting.

Was that even a sentence? I don’t know. The point is she’s STILL getting harassed. She’s STILL getting “prank” calls. She’s STILL getting death threats. People are STILL digging around in her personal life and the personal life of everyone connected to her.

Comments

Equal attention does not mean equal credulity. Otherwise, there is seriously no point in believing anything, because both sides of every argument are equally true and there is no truth or reason in anything.

@Tyra Lith
I don’t know whether this campaign (it was done by the AfD’s youth organisation) was copied from the “i don’t need”-campaign. It was a reaction to a campaign by the Young Social Democrats in which people held up placard with the words “I am a feminist because…” So the AfD answered with “I am not a feminist because…”

Btw, did this campaign really originate in Poland and if so, was there an organisation behind it? My girlfriend is Polish, and a feminist. We usually take part in a huge annual feminist demonstration. But knowing Polish politics, there is a strong antifeminist (and catholic) current.

The Pirate Party once invited a MANNdat-guy to speak at my university about discrimination against boys in the education system. But a feminist member of the party rallied some friends to argue with him. His presentation was hilariously awful. I actually told him that had he been one of my students, he would have failed the class.

So I just found out that a close friend (as in a loyal friend for over 10 years) is a follower of GamerGate, and is convinced that the movement is legitimately about confronting corruption in gamer culture, and that all these nasty threats against people like Zoe Quinn are just a small faction – a fringe – misbehaving.

It was awkward for the first few minutes of our chat since she also brought up Christina Hoff Sommers (that just pissed me off) as somehow legitimate, and I really thought I was going to lose a friend over this.

Thankfully it didn’t, and after I calmed down, she was very much willing to hear out exactly why Sommers and her ilk got so much flak – I brought up the fact that Sommers was against fair wages for women – and then I explained the chatlogs that Dave slogged through to prove that the whole thing was a farce.

My takeaway from this:

1. When it’s a personal friend you’re talking to, it helps to try to explain in a reasoned, rational tone why they’re wrong, and really try to hear out why they’re caught up with #Gamergate in the first place. It’s saddening that people with such good intentions get swept up in this whole thing. The hopeful part is that if they’e like my friend, maybe they’re not such a lost cause.

2. Fuck the people who started this whole hate brigade by stirring up the sympathies of other people with actual good intentions. I do not see any difference between them and con-men, cultists, or snake oil salesmen.

3. I wouldn’t have known this much about how ridiculously awful the #Gamergate FUBAR is if it had not been for We Hunted the Mammoth, Ophelia Benson’s blog, or Skepchick. Thank you, Dave.

No. Both sides aren’t factually or morally equivalent. Isaac Asimov mocks you from beyond the grave.

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

@Antonio, that sounds like my experience, only not with nearly as close a friend (internet RP friend only) and she’s been doing more selling me on GG than I have talking her away from it. The point when I decided to walk away didn’t have much to do with GG, though; it was her straight up telling me not to say anything against Erin Pizzey unless I’d read the majority of her work.

The “it’s just a fringe element!” excuse is so frustrating, especially when I give examples of that “fringe element” including their biggest name supporters like Milo and CHS. Then it becomes “They’re not our leaders, they’re not speaking for GG, I’m not going to tell them what to say on their own timelines.” Criticism just rolls off, and I’m pretty sure that’s how they want it to be. Deflect instead of address. They say they don’t have leaders because leaders become targets, but it’s also a convenient way to avoid accountability.

She got as far as saying that Anita was not a gamer, whereupon I said something in the lines of “So? Does a bystander’s opinion become wrong just because they’re not part of the group?” and I explained to her this was a variation of the courtier’s reply.

That investigative writing Dave did with the chatlogs really helped changer her mind. She was about seriously convinced it was “faked”, until I noted “All 4,000 + pages?”

And now she’s asking for articles from this blog and Skepchick. We’re meeting this Sunday to play SSB.

The “leaderless” protests last year where I live showed exactly how a real grassroots movement deals with assholes and profiteers in their midst – shun them, denounce them and make sure they don’t co-opt you for their bullshit.

Btw, did this campaign really originate in Poland and if so, was there an organisation behind it?

IIRC, when we talked about it here, it was thought they might be folks on http://www.fiverr.com who made the signs for money, thus the weirdly seductive poses and such. Not exactly an organization, just assholes paying people to make the signs.

Aaaand… I can’t even. Going back to avoiding the internet for the rest of the week, probably.

What with this, and my pain meds being re-classified as Class 2, requiring a brand new prescription every time!!! BLEH!!!

So, now I’m taking fewer meds, to try to stretch a one month supply out to three months, and I AM HURTING. Just can’t deal right now. These people! Poor Zoe Quinn, Anita Zarkeesian, and all the others! I just can’t…

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.